implosion

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. A violent collapse inward, as of a highly evacuated glass vessel.

n. Violent compression.

n. The inward collapse of a building that is being demolished in a controlled fashion by the weakening and breaking of structural members by explosives.

n. Linguistics The pronunciation of a stop consonant with the breath drawn in.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The inrush of air in forming a suction stop.

n. The action of imploding.

n. The act or action of bringing to or as if to a center.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. A bursting inwards, as of a vessel from which the air has been exhausted; -- contrasted with explosion.

n. The inward-moving detonation wave cause by detonation of explosives arrayed spherically around a core; -- a technique used in atomic bombs to compress fissionable material to allow a chain reaction time to produce an explosion of the fissionable material.

n. A sudden compression of the air in the mouth, simultaneously with and affecting the sound made by the closure of the organs in uttering p, t, or k, at the end of a syllable (see Guide to Pronunciation, §§159, 189); also, a similar compression made by an upward thrust of the larynx without any accompanying explosive action, as in the peculiar sound of b, d, and g, heard in Southern Germany.

Etymologies

in-2 + (ex)plosion.

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

Your implosion is a daily treat, and NO ONE on the Democrat side – me included – is going to get in the way of elevating Palin (geez ... talk about a Messiah complex; at least our guy can understand Earth is greater than 5000 years old).

The officials briefed on the intelligence, speaking on condition of anonymity because the report has not yet been released, say the experts identified a structure there that some believe is a testing capsule for what is called an "implosion device."

All this invasion of twitter by businesses tells me that an implosion is going to follow the ‘tipping point’ – may be Om meant the ‘tipping point’ to be the falling over of an edifice without sound foundation:).